Killing Blow

The armies of Rebel Generalissimo Francisco Franco marched up to Barcelona on three sides last week and, with no more than a sniper's fusillade, the biggest city in Spain fell. No European military action comparable to it had taken place since the Prussians took Paris in 1871, and, according to all calculations, the Spanish Rebels like the Prussians, had won their war.

Madrid had held out for two and a half years. But Madrid lies on a plain and behind a deep-cut river bed. Barcelona lies defenseless in a cup. Furthermore, when the Rebels tried to take Madrid in 1936 they were far inferior in numbers and not much better off in material than the defenders. And the defenders of Madrid were spirited militia, men like the "iron" regiment which snatched up its arms from the dead. The Republican Army that was forced back on Barcelona had been outnumbered and smashed for five weeks by the greatest concentration of war material since 1918.

Last week the People's Army was in full disorganized retreat northward through what remained to them of Catalonia--an area about the size of Connecticut. Some brigades had 120 men left out of a normal complement of 1,500. Some companies had only 25 rifles and no machine guns. And as a further sign of demoralization, behind it the People's Army left a large part of what stores of food and gasoline remained.

For the third time the Loyalist Government's capital was moved. Premier Dr. Juan Negrin set up headquarters in the little fortress town of Figueras, 17 miles south of the French border and 40 miles north of the advancing Rebel lines at week's end. He announced a fight to the finish and declared that fresh troops with new arms would establish a line on the Ter River. In an odd dispatch. New York Timesman H. L. Matthews stated that the French border had "opened just a little" so that war material could get to the Loyalists. There was no official indication of this in Paris. Nor was there any indication in the exhausted Loyalist Army that the orders of the civil authorities would be heeded.

Vincent Sheean, one of the last men to give up a fight against reaction, wrote democratic Spain's obituary when, after inspecting the scene, he reported:

"A fascist triumph in Catalonia appears to be beyond question. ... It seems to me sure that the Spanish tragedy will end its days of active war very soon. . . .

"At present it seems that the moment for plain speaking has arrived, and is in fact overdue, and the soldiers appear to think the same. The southern part of the Republic is starving and isolated without war material. It is all over now, and those who have most admired the courage and pride of the Republic must hope only that the survivors will obtain mercy from the fascists."

Hegira. Even if men and materials were to be had, the problem of distributing them was next to insoluble. For every road in the area was choked with refugees, not only a half million that had left Barcelona, but thousands more that the advancing Rebels swept before them. It was one of history's greatest and most tragic hegiras. From heights on the French frontier as far as eye could see a steady river of humanity slowly rolled toward the border.

For France, already a haven of 5,000 Basques who fled from Generalissimo Franco after the fall of Santander in 1937, the problem of what to do about the new hegira--how many to admit, whom to reject, how to feed and clothe them--engaged the attention of the Cabinet. By week's end fully 40,000 refugees had already been admitted, and still they came. The Loyalist Government asked France to take 150,000, but estimates of how many would soon be knocking at France's doors went as high as 500,000.

France asked Generalissimo Franco to agree to set up a "neutral" zone on the Spanish side of the frontier for the refugees, but the Generalissimo refused. Britain urged the Rebels to declare a general amnesty. To prevent a mass refugee "invasion" the French border was reinforced with 4,500 more Mobile Guards and Senegalese troops.

Rich Man's War. There was one major explanation for the collapse of the Loyalist Army: the Rebels' overwhelming superiority of material. No secret was it that Germany and Italy (as well as France and Great Britain) last summer piled up huge reserve supplies of ammunition, artillery and planes in preparation for the war that was averted in September at Munich.

After Munich, the Germans and Italians were reported to have shipped much of theirs to Generalissimo Franco. The result was that the Spanish conflict, heretofore a "poor man's" affair, suddenly became a rich man's war--for one side. That was what finally broke the People's Army.

But wars are not won in one place at one time. It took the Wilderness and Shiloh as well as Gettysburg to finish the U. S. Civil War. Looking backward last week, military observers could see that General Franco's steady gains had been marked with more than one key victory (see map).

It was important that he drove south in the summer of 1936 and united the northern and southern Rebel territories. It was important that he closed the western French gateway to the Loyalists and wiped up the Basque Republic. Probably most important of all was his drive to the Mediterranean in the spring of 1938, splitting the Loyalists in two. But the victories which made these military movements possible were really won on the diplomatic front. There, aided and abetted by aggressive Italy and Germany, Rebel Spain gradually won the actual, though not formally recognized, privilege of receiving unlimited war supplies at the same time they were being denied to the Republic.

With the expected fall of Loyalist Catalonia, Republican Spain will consist only of the Madrid-Valencia area. It is without war industries and is fed mostly by vulnerable Valencia Province, whose capital is now only 30 miles from the Rebel front. It seems impossible that the forces of General Jose Miaja, which failed to make a saving diversion as the Rebels pressed on Barcelona, will be able to withstand a Rebel onslaught any better than the Catalonian Army. The surest indication that all was up with the Republic was the fact that when Barcelona fell, the news was kept a secret in Madrid.

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